29 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

Please burn down Harmony Gold's HQ.

[CycKath]

We have no way of knowing if the Japanese rights holders would be any more willing to deal if HG was out of the way, Dougram is pretty much a niche idea but Macross has a lot of fans even now

[Ngamok]

Rhent, on 15 July 2014 - 05:41 PM, said:

This Project Phoenix rework of the Marauder:



Looks nothing like Harmony Gold's Zentadi Battlepod


There is nothing stopping Piranha from releasing a Marauder save a dip in their revenues. Once there is a dip, you'll see the Marauder released.

What's stopping PGI from releasing the reseen version? All the cry babies who would throw poo because it's not the original.

[Noth]

Ngamok, on 15 July 2014 - 06:36 PM, said:

What's stopping PGI from releasing the reseen version? All the cry babies who would throw poo because it's not the original.

No. Harmony gold is stopping them. Here's the issue. PGI is not a large company. So what Harmony gold would do is sue PGI/IGP then tie them up for years in court draining the money from PGI/IGP until they have to give up or close. That is the issue.

[Lynx7725]

Noth, on 15 July 2014 - 06:42 PM, said:

No. Harmony gold is stopping them. Here's the issue. PGI is not a large company. So what Harmony gold would do is sue PGI/IGP then tie them up for years in court draining the money from PGI/IGP until they have to give up or close. That is the issue.

And I'm willing to forego the Marauder, in order to keep having other new and shiny stompy robots to shoot at. Gotta keep the bigger picture in mind.

[Scratx]

Ngamok, on 15 July 2014 - 06:36 PM, said:

What's stopping PGI from releasing the reseen version? All the cry babies who would throw poo because it's not the original.

The fear that regardless of merit if HG decides to sue they're going to be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars fending them off in court.

And I don't think they'd be able to claw back legal costs from HG once (or if?) they won. The revenues they'd get from the Marauder being in the game pale in comparison to that.

[Ngamok]

You fools know what I meant.

[johntherussian]

There are plenty of mechs at this time.How about a bunch of new maps instead?

[Auren]

[GZBLASTERMASTER]

This subject is worn the hell out. I personally love the Warhammer, I remember seeing it on a Battletech related book or box in the comic store when I was a kid...but I also remember it being a poorly rendered copy of a mech I saw on Macross at 7am Sat on the UHF frequency. As an adult now and having a chosen career in the creative industry, it's as simple as this: FASA or whoever owned Battletech at the time decided to copy someone else work (whether they "licensed" it or not, they still borrowed from art already in syndication and plastered all over another brand. To say they "licensed" it is like saying it's totally ok for Coke to use a variation of the Pepsi logo because they paid the distribution warehouse supervisor for the rights...) when all they had to do was come up with their own designs. Scifi concept art and illustration were by no means infantile during that period, a quick glance at 80's era Heavy Metals, Omnis, and Marvel/DC comics can confirm this. The other original designs may sometimes look a bit like they held an art contest at a junior high school, but our current gen PGI creative team has no problem taking that raw material and making it completely bad ass. I love Robotech. I also loved running around in my Warhammer IIC in MW2. I also love the protection IP law and protocol provides sometimes and so do other creatives who have the rights to certain works whether they did them themselves or have a legal right. People whine about Harmony Gold, but be real, the designs belonged to the Macross Universe ( I mean they even based the Phoenix Hawk LAM on the VF-1 Valkyrie, let authors plant it in novels and describe it in detail, the works...ask Hasbro how that worked out when the Jetfire we saw in the cartoon looked NOTHING like the toy or it's Macross rip-off model...and this was immediate action taken back in the 80's. They even have shots of Stinger and Wasp art that is straight Veritech battloid mode, touting them as jump specialty recon mechs, for real, where does it end...) and Macross is STILL a strong franchise. One quick trip to Akihabara and a glance at upcoming feature films and games in JP will put any speculation about that to rest. These dudes have more side stories in Macross than Bleach and Naruto combined. Harmony Gold bought the international distribution rights flat out 30 years ago, everyone else signed on it, and that's the end of it, reading all these vague legal "situations" concerning the matter is played the hell out now, using terms like "unseen" and "reseen", put it on mute. It's just time to chalk it up and let these go, the advancement of the information age has crushed the veil, people looking at it from a pragmatic perspective see it for what it really is and all the taking around it and not facing the music won't change a thing. They never belonged to us and never will, as soon as Macross dies out completely in the countries it's doing numbers in now, all HG is going to do is ramp up distribution in another country or continent full scale like it's some new craze. We're not stupid, we've seen it before...but there are countries that have toy shelves that haven't seen the first Alpha Fighter or Mospeada unit, no SDF-1. When they do decide to clean up there, if those people have already seen a Warhammer or Marauder prancing around on their screen in MWO, they'll immediately pair those designs with Battletech originally and not Macross, the popularity of MW2 shows what happens when people do this: there are no Macross mechs in MW2 Mercs(which didn't bother me as the Summoner DOMINATED that game). This is something that will easily stretch out another 30 years, best move now is to just redesign them completely and offer the redesigned minis and a rule book addendum for tabletop players as a free trade-in. They effed up at the source, it's gonna hurt some die-hards, but they need to just go ahead and fix it so we can move on entirely.